I agree. I like the format. They could probably tell from access logs that a lot of readers do what I do: read the first page (introduction), then read the last page (conclusion), skipping everything in between. It makes life easier, even if costs you a page of ad impressions.Reply

Thanks Anand,for presenting this new technology and testing it out. As it is so new, it would be good to hear what platforms, i.e. laptops, motherboards, extension cards do offer support for this mSATA technology.Reply

It's not that new. It's been around a year and some notebooks uses it. There is also mSATA > SATA 2.5" adapters. Some Ultraportables uses mSATA too. Like Dell XPS 13 or HP Folio 13. Those would be kinda hard to upgrade since they are not really serviceable though. But possible and easy to varying kinds of degree.

Motherboards and other stuff has started using it too of course. But they appear to be SATA2/300 on the mSATA port only. Not sure what system they use to bench the drives here. Probably using a desktop system with a adapter.Reply

I've been using an Intel 310 mSATA in my Lenovo W520 (i7-2960XM, 32GB of RAM, nVidia Quadro 2000M w/ 2GB) and it's served me well. I'd love a slightly faster and bigger mSATA drive so the 256GB version may be it for me. I'm a bit confused as to why Intel has not released much larger mSATA drives yet.Reply

There are plenty of other vendors though. Micron/Crucial as article, Samsung, SanDisk, even Toshiba and players like OCZ and Plextor/Liteon too. They all have 256GB /mSATA SSD drives. Intel doesn't seem to see them as proper system drives, much of their mSATA lineup is touted against RST, Microsoft ReadyBoost. Like companies such as Kingston, ADATA etc specifically turns against those.

Normally many workstation lappys supports mSATA now days, I think the list for some of those goes like Lenovo X220/T420/T420s/W520 (plus others) and on Dell M4500/M4600/M6400/M6500/M6600. Some Toshibas and Sony is also using it.

The 310s are just using 34nm NAND and old Intel controller to begin with. It's all much higher density now. Those larger drives at the time used many more chips and channels to the controller.Reply

Take a look at the recent Z77 Mobo roundup for the upcoming Ivy Bridge release.Lots of boards there will starts to use it.I wouldn't be surprised to see Laptops with the same connector in 2 months when Ivy Bridge goes mobile either.Reply

"Micron does not disclose its OEM pricing structure, but a company rep told us that the mSATA version of the C400 would cost a little bit less than the standard SATA versions that are available today."

I could do with a 256GB mSATA SSD only in the mSATA/mPCIe slot. If I didnt own a 300GB SSD 320 series already....

If this is actually less than their current lineup of standard SATA versions, that would be amazing. There are a number of good mSATA drives out there, but prices haven't dropped like the standard SATA drives. The Runcore mSATA III would be my pick as it destroys all other mSATA drives, but it's about $2.50/gb. I would really take any second gen mSATA drive though as long as it hovered in the $1/gb range. The OCZ Nocti currently has the best price/performance and is around $1.50/gb.Reply

My mobo only has SATA 2 on the mSata port, and a quick look around it seems this is pretty standard.

Is it still worth it? I already have 2x Vertex 3 128GB, one as C drive and the other as a games drive, but I would love to have a cache as well for my 1TB HD (where most of 250 games from Steam are /juntioned.Reply

Any clue what the availability is? I've been wanting to put an mSATA as my primary OS for a while, but they seem to top out at 120GB for the OCZ Octi right now, but I really want more. Too bad my notebook only does SATA2 over mSATA :\Reply

My Gigabyte board as a mSATA port on it but is limited to 3gb. Is there any performance penalty for going with a 3Gb port? This form facter on a Gigabyte board would be an extremely clean system and is a great way to save some cabling mess in a case but it's not worth it if it's going to be slower. Reply

Essentially what will happen is the data transfer between your motherboard and SSD will be capped at ~300MB/s. So look though the charts, you will only notice a difference between a 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s port in the loads that allow the drive to push past that ~300MB/s. For this C400/M4 SSD the only time that port difference will be relevant is during sequential reads.

So my take is to not be concerned unless you absolutely need to maximize the performance of sequential reads, because all other aspects of the SSDs performance won't be affected at all. Most desktop loads are fairly random, so I doubt you'll notice a difference in normal use.For what it's worth, I have a Corsair Force3GT plugged into a 3Gb/s port and it still feels the tiniest amount faster than my parents Crucial M4 which is plugged into a 6Gb/s port. Reply

I think it'd be useful if you added a "standard" hard drive to the power graphs, just so people can more easily see whether it consumes less power than an old platter drive.Also, have you put any thought to putting up a table that lists the total energy used to complete your benchmarks? I've seen that some of the faster drives draw more power, but wouldn't it sometimes work out that it still uses less energy since it completes the test faster?Reply

I would honestly love to see desktop motherboards have a port for these on board, and have the form become common enough that you could just snap one on and eliminate the cables associated with it. SFF PCs could become single board affairs with cabling only for power and an optional optical drive.Reply

Now imagine this attached to a modified Rasberry Pi. Ultra small computer, with storage to boot. And all powered by USB. That will be the day. And to push the envelope further, display using the Google's Project Glass. ULTIMATE!!Reply

As in, if the drive is used for the primary OS install, then how long will it typically take to accumulate 36 TB of writes, and what happens when that number is reached? Compared to other drives of similar capacity, is 36TBW good, middling, or poor? Is there any empirical data showing a correlation between SSD longevity and "Endurance Spec"? If so, what is it?Reply

You clearly have not been reading this site for very long and don't understand much about SSD performance.

Anandtech used to include those exact benchmarks and they became pointless because in those types of tests the performance across SSDs is nearly the same. I suggest educating yourself before opening your mouth and looking like a luddite. Reply

lol boot time and how fast it loads a program? They **ALL** load windows in about 15 seconds from a clean install and all programs open in less than 3 seconds. Photoshop maybe 4. That would be the most retarded benchmark I have ever heard of doing to get a real grasp on how fast these things are and the actual difference between them.

If you understand anything about this stuff, you can determine real world performance from the numbers given. This isnt the old days with screwed up random reads anymore. Look at the I/O ability and get with the program. Reply

If they **ALL** load Windows and boot programs at the same speed, what does that say about all these graphs that show alleged large differences? (it says they're bunk, misleading, and stupid) Why do you defend synthetic benchmarks that have no relevance to reality?Reply